


who do you burn for

by harryanthus



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crying, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Louis Tomlinson Calls Harry Styles Pet Names, M/M, References to Addiction, Self-Indulgent, Strangers to Lovers, my excuse to write poetic prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:08:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26987224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harryanthus/pseuds/harryanthus
Summary: He murmurs it like a chant into the pale skin of his neck, where the bruises bloom, where he is the most delicate. He repeats it like a prayer, he keeps repeating with the hope that he will believe it too.they are desperate to save each other and they do.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	who do you burn for

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t any of the characters (wish i did though) this is purely self indulgent. all mistakes are my own. it includes my own poetry!!!!

_there's a flame  
_

_pouring out of you_

_i wonder if you_

_birthed it out of_

_hatred or love_

_because hatred is orange_

_love is so red and yellow_

_who do you burn for_

_anger or to be mellow_

_your silence_

_it's heavy_

_it's an answer_

_and a question_

_you're lost in the heat_

_you've been burning_

_so long, so much_

_the fire is you_

_i wonder if you loved_

_i realise, blood running hot_

_you loved and loved but you burned_

_so much, you became the sun,_

_my sun_

_you've been_

_burning_

_so quiet_

_take my_

_words not_

_as an insult_

_but a plea_

_burn louder_

_more softer_

For Louis, Harry has been this odd bit of poetry. A word that changes the entire perspective that is built till that point.

To him, he was something he classified as dangerous, addiction, _always_. He could charm everyone and hide behind it, keep his personality open and friendly, embellished with ruddy cheeks and soft dimples but it stopped working on Louis. 

He saw through all of that since the day he met him at a friend of a friend’s bonfire, sitting alone in the back, swathed in the glow of embers, biding his time.

Harry had been over the moon, silken lips puckering up to whisper secrets, no longer hiding himself, not perturbed that he broke through his walls.

“They’re not really walls,” he says, hand halfway in air, silver rings glinting in the pale moonlight.

“What are they then?”

Harry stretched himself out on the crudely trimmed grass, lilac lids closed, shadows dancing over his face, phantoms of desire. “I’m a glass house and people, the world, they’re more into the idea of watching their reflection than they are into seeing through the glass and seeing me.”

A sly grin lights up his face. “Everyone but you, Louis Tomlinson, are not interested in watching the art that is you. You don’t have eyes for yourself, do you?”

Louis knocks his ankle into his. “You are not as one dimensional as I thought you would be.”

Harry’s grin was lost in the dark and dying fire but he felt the stretch of lips on his mouth. 

_Sinking moon._

| | |

Harry wants to spend the entire year travelling.

“Next year I’ll be twenty six,” he drawls out, sucking on a cigarette, sat on his tiny, cramped balcony.

Louis leans forward to snatch it out of his fingers, ignoring the dark smoke that pours out of his nostrils. “And?”

“And twenty six is a good time to become responsible.”

He takes a drag of the stolen cig, nicotine stuck to his teeth. “I’m twenty six and I doubt I am responsible,” he snorts.

Harry fits himself into his space, slender fingers snatching the cigarette and crushing the butt. “You take care of me,” he purrs, breath fanning over his cheek, so close that he can taste the smoke from his lips.

Louis presses his thumb against his lips, plush and soft. “And I always will, darling.”

He kisses his cheek, sinks his giggles deep into his cheek and they line his teeth. His fucking giggles line his teeth and Louis tastes them everytime he licks the inside of his mouth.

“Travel with me,” he demands, words muffled by his shirt, curls tickling his nose.

He grips the back of his shirt, the silk slippery under his fingers. “No place I would rather be. Promised to take care of you, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They smoke another three cigarettes, his— _Louis_ ’— neighbour yells at them about dropping the butts in her plants. 

_Dying irises_.

| | |

He learns a lot about Harry as they move.

Usually Harry prides himself in taking care of himself. He takes care of himself like the delicate flower he is and Louis tends to him the same. 

But sometimes though, his thoughts are fire.

They are fire and they burn through his scalp and burn his brain, sear strips of fat and flesh.

And Harry, _Harry_ keeps feeding the fire, too enchanted by the smoke curling around him in a bubble, choking him.

Louis pours sand over the fire and rubs salve on his scorched being, taking care of him.

“I’ve got masters in self destruction, Lou!” A caramel sticky laugh. 

Even in his darkest moments, he is the only splash of colour in his otherwise drab life.

“No. You’re just creative in killing yourself, H.”

Harry only continues to laugh in return, hollow and echoing, and presses his wet lips to the mouth of a bottle, swallowing again, coaxing up the fallen flame, tips of red and orange licking clear skies, redness in the whites of his eyeballs.

Only Louis knows the love shaped bruises he longs for, the planets he burns into his skin, the stars he swallows, their glow speckled around his mouth, tip of his nose.

_Burning eyes._

| | |

Being an oddity draws attention.

He embraces all the attention, preening under the glazed glances and wanting whispers that surround him with blush pink invitation.

Girls and boys flock him, he has them eating out of his hand. He lets them live in the illusion that he is theirs, he makes them believe that they are the only one he’ll ever want and then he slips away.

He slips away from the gaps of their fingers just like desert sand slipping away, heat only staying for so long.

Louis observes this as a bystander. He watches them all fall over for him, smug at the knowledge that whatever happens, whoever he has on his arm as he roams the town in the day, he comes back to _him_. 

He teases him about it. “You break so many hearts, darling. Should I be worried about you handling mine?”

Harry gives him a blown out smile, teeth out and clinical white, dimples digging into his cheeks, corners of his eyes crinkling, a paradox within himself. “I never take their hearts. Let me explain it to you.”

“Another glass house story?”

Harry licks his jugular, mouth on his pulse, wanting. “Of course, my love. I have my palms in the air, right. So here I am standing with my hands raised up and they throw their hearts. They obsess over the idea of me catching theirs and keep throwing.”

His bite is sharp, always finding the most tender places to sink in his teeth. “I never catch and they break. Fragile things, those hearts are.”

Louis tugs his curls, grounding both of them. “And me?”

“I don’t need to catch it. It’s right beside my own. Do you feel it?” He whispers, gripping his wrist in his hand, laying it over his chest, over the thin shirt, warm skin underneath, a muscle pumping red.

He doesn’t talk more about it, all his breath stolen. He feels for the cavity in his chest.

There isn’t one.

_Misplaced hollows._

| | | 

He is good at putting on a show.

_Born to perform._

He tells him as much, body lax, tendrils of lavender smoke wrapping around his lungs, clothes askew artfully, alluring. 

“I’m a man of many talents, Lou- _is_ ,” he hisses, tongue obscenely wetting his lower lip, vowels rolling around in his mouth.

His name tastes like thunder on Harry’s lips _._

“You’re a filthy liar. You give an inch and take away a foot.”

“I never give, that’s not like me.”

“You always give to me, sweetheart.”

He doesn’t like Louis seeing through him.

He makes a show of leaving when Louis refuses to agree with him, and he does leave, with disgruntled stomping, rose white insolence, coppery farewells.

Like always he comes back, all feverish and fragile in his arms, cries soft and mewling, dissolving in a bat of dark lashes.

With needy hands and a scorching hunger that only ends with stickiness, opaque white, expanses of gold and ivory skin all tacky with sweat, they reconcile. 

They are red all over, mouths, chests, thighs.

They become canvases splashed with reds, violets, and pinks. Love bites, the too tight grip of fingers on pudgy flesh, ripeness of lust on their youthful faces.

They fuck so he can avoid talking about why he’s back. Why he comes back every single time.

 _Masked emotions_.

| | | 

They had started travelling in March. Harry didn’t have a car fit for travelling but he did. 

Louis doesn’t think too much about how it is April already.

“I want a cabin in Idaho. High in the hills or mountains or whatever those rocks are,” Harry tells him, thighs spread out in his seat, wearing one of Louis’ flannels, drumming his fingers to an absent tune.

Colourful buildings blur in his periphery. He catches a whiff of tobacco and vanilla.

“Why?”

“Wanna get away from here. From all of this,” he ruefully says, knuckles tapping the window.

“All of this?”

He hums. “Yeah. I like the snow.” 

“You would be so golden even in the cold,” he adds a moment later, rings clinking as he drops them on the pearl oyster shell he insisted Louis keep in his minivan. 

“One day,” he encourages, blindly reaching out to squeeze his hand thrice and it feels an awful lot like he is promising him.

Promising to stay with him in the cabin, build snowmans during evenings, hold him during snowstorms, wrap his hands around his waist and kiss his neck while he fills up their place with aromas of spices. 

He softly asks. “You would face the snow for me?”

_There isn’t a lot I wouldn’t do for you._

“Of course, darling.”

He squeezes back thrice and it feels like another promise.

“Why?”

_For every question why you are my because._

“I would look golden in the snow,” he says instead, pretending that the ache in his chest is not there.

_Delicate promises._

| | | 

They rent a room and plan to stay for a week sometime during mid May.

Throughout the week, they ride the bus together, sitting beside each other.

As Harry charms the passengers, words raspy and sticky, too bright and too blinding, Louis tries to keep himself as closed off as he can.

Right now he is leaning forward to bare his sore knees, the rips on his jeans widening, the bruised knees from the itchy carpet in their room and the slippery silk sheets he refused to leave home without, all messy curls and constellations in his eyes, glassy green and wide as the universe.

He wears his debauchery with pride.

The light in his eyes is quick to disappear. Louis touches his wrist. “What happened?”

“The lady with the bad nose job. She is glaring at us,” he says in a hushed murmur.

Louis glares back at her.

It is not the first time that he is being judged. _They_ are being judged.

He’s been called names and been screamed at by men who don’t know how to give and women who’ve never been given.

They consider his pleasure as sins, and tell him that the fire that burns inside him is a piece of hell he’s carrying around, reminding him of all the _sins_ he commits in the name of need and attraction.

And sometimes, at his lowest, he believes them.

Louis hates those brief moments which hang heavily around his throat, a metaphorical noose, no rope burns left behind for the world to see the after effects of harsh words.

In their rented room with grubby mustard walls, drinking cheap liquor out of amber bottles, they lie in silence, watching the ceiling, counting the water stains.

There is a strange comfort in counting the stains. Reminds him of being seven and stubbornly sticking glow in the dark stars on the ceiling of his bedroom, refusing to let his mom take them down even after the glow was gone and all that remained was caked dust.

“Does it hurt?”

“It always does,” Harry honestly replies, voice clear.

An ache births in him, spreading all over his ribs. “It shouldn’t.”

“It’s fine, sweetheart. I can bear the pain.”

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

Harry laughs and it is hollow and empty and heartbreaking. 

_Gaps of his rib cage. Parted alcohol stained lips._

He cracks, he sees the cracks reflected in the glass house.

_Fragile boys._

| | |

They get a cabin in Idaho. It’s not as expensive as they thought it would be.

Harry’s eyes look greener with the snow surrounding him, a vision in the soft, hazy light.

They sit on the velvet carpet they bought somewhere during their trip, in front of the fireplace, smelling of firewood and safety.

Harry is stubborn and keeps drinking late into the night, hands shaking, fingers loose around the mouth of his bottle.

He prances around in his dark brown underpants, curls swinging wildly, smile bordering on hysteria, mouth red in the firelight and teeth startlingly white.

“Lou-ee, Louis, Lewis,” he prods, digging his foot into his side.

He is sprawled out and sleepy. “What is it, petal?”

He abandons the bottle on the couch. He drops down to all fours, elbows sore and bright, lower half aligned with his

He gives a bright, satisfied grin. “Hi.”

Louis chuckles, carding his fingers through his hair, untangling the knots. “Hi, darling.”

He nuzzles into his chest, all sharp cheekbones and shapely jaw, nose a little too big. His hand covers his left pec, fingers pressing in. “I want to feel your heartbeat,” he sullenly whines, rearranging himself.

Louis tangles their limbs. “It was right beside yours, wasn’t it, Casanova?”

He pouts and he is so lovely, it physically aches to look at him for too long. 

“Be nice to me. I wanna tell you a secret.”

He hums, kissing the corner of his mouth, tasting the liquor sweetened by his skin.

“You’re dangerous, more than anything I am addicted to.”

He swallows the words he desperately wants to scream. He wants to scream how Harry is hot, so hot he burns.

There is a flame raging in him and Louis has always been scared of the fire.

“You’re my only addiction.”

But with Harry, he craves to lick the flames, feel his skin and muscle turn into ash and sit heavy and grim on his tongue, stick to the roof of his mouth, stain his teeth with grey. Tarnished silver like.

Kissing him often leaves soot behind.

He doesn’t care. There is rarely something as bewitching as tearing yourself apart in the name of entertainment and juvenile fun.

_Canyon ashes._

| | |

Whenever someone brings up the past, his need to escape, Harry stiffens, becomes the one piece of jigsaw that never seems to fit in unless turned a certain way, that odd bone that never recovered after an injury, a scar that has a history he’d rather not recall.

He clams up, freezes blue and chokes out nonsense that feels and tastes like iron and poorly masked helplessness.

His hands turn sweaty, fingers desperately crush Louis’ own. 

“We just wanted a change of scenery,” Louis smoothly interrupts, pressing a kiss to his jaw.

They finish the conversation and leave the sourness of the past right where they are. 

Some nights away from their roots — the places that made them and broke them — it is hard on him. 

Harry drives himself to tears over false beliefs. “Happiness is a reward,” he bitterly tells him, a lick of unsweetened cocoa, tongue darkened with it.

“It is not. It shouldn’t have to be, love.”

He murmurs it like a chant into the pale skin of his neck, where the bruises bloom, where he is the most delicate. He repeats it like a prayer, he keeps repeating with the hope that he will believe it too.

He kisses him, over the stars, the planets, the constellations. He kisses him until the bitterness of his mouth, deep in his throat, it becomes nothing but a memory.

They’re rough and broken, all jagged edges and ugly stains, a blemish one would rush to get rid of, marks scattered across as if they were too much for their bodies to contain, skin stretching into lines of pink and white, pale flesh and bone.

He wouldn’t want it any other way.

_Bitter tangerine._

| | |

_it goes something like this_

_you can see your nipples, hard and pointy_

_your shirt is threadbare and faded_

_it used to be teal or was it tiffany?_

_you don’t know, not anymore_

_it’s threadbare and your nipples are hard_

_you’re standing in your mother’s house_

“Poetry builds up in my head when you touch me,” he breathes, hiding his face in his neck, digging the sharp bones of his cheeks.

Louis continues to fondle him, each squeeze of fingers sending up a bolt of pain. He had chewed his nails, one deeper than the other, skin sensitive, blood rushing to the surface. 

The pain is scarlet. An altar after a sacrifice.

_and it goes something like that_

_the bottom of your pajama pants_

_are soaked_

_your hands smell like the little_

_bottle of orange and yellow liquid_

_your toes are cold, your have no socks on_

“You are a vision, my love.” He presses his lips to the underside of his jaw, and licks, his mouth hot, molten heat coursing through their sweat slick bodies.

He tastes like soap and lightning and boy.

“Would write so much poetry about you. Would fill up books,” he gasps, belly clenched tight, thighs quivering, tears trickling down on his cheeks.

A river originating from the mountains.

He is poetry in motion. Louis doesn’t tell him that. He tucks their spent bodies under the sheets, moulding into each other.

_the house smells like oils and laundry detergent_

_there’s a song playing in the background_

_or maybe it is in your head_

_your shirt is wet, your pants are cold_

_but that is not how it goes is it_

_you don’t know anymore_

_but you still don’t have socks on_

A sense of belonging floods him. It fills up his arteries, their valves, hollows of his bones.

 _Broken melodies._

| | |

Love hides from him.

It hides under his sweaty armpit, musk overwhelming, reeking of animal. It hides under the delicate skin of his throat, one slash away from drawing blood. It hides behind the bend of his knee, he takes it to his chest, he tries to keep the bird in him trapped.

The flutter in his tummy is far too violent for it to come from a swarm of butterflies. Butterfly wings are guazy and thin and translucent as the chlorine blue shower curtain in morning sunlight, his skin between long fingers, the inside of a wrist.

There is a bird in him, fine boned and light, all the marrow replaced with air, and it keeps flapping its wings. The wings are wide.

They spread from his tummy to his sternum, under his ribs, brushing his lungs, grasping for his misplaced heart, trying to break and crush all of him to get out of him.

He keeps his knee to his chest. He doesn’t let go. He wants it to stop thrashing.

So it hides. At least until he let goes of the knee.

The bird and love.

They both are hiding.

_Gilded cages._

| | |

“I get nervous and think of an elephant trying to ride a unicycle,” he conversationally says, blowing a big soap bubble.

Louis taps his knee to let him know he’s listening.

“It takes away some of my fear.” 

Another bubble. 

“And sometimes it doesn’t.”

It bursts on his nose.

“I take pills. Too many pills. They’re colourful and they erase the colours in my mind.” He ticks off on his finger, a bead of alkaline water sliding down.

He dumps the leftover liquid down the sink. They’ll find bubbles for a long time.

“Mostly I don’t need them. Unless it gets bad.”

He drapes his legs over his knee. Thighs thick and encased in black jeans.

“But you never make me feel bad about any of it.”

Their arms brush. The sky outside must be a mix of fading blue and mauve velvet. His clothes stick to his skin, perspiration soaking through them.

“I am greedy. I take too many pills and feel too many things and want too much love.”

The bird is poking at his ribs, cartilage, calcium, floating. 

“You help me heal.”

It breaks free.

“And sometimes I think.”

He grabs his hand and slots their fingers together.

“I think — I am healing you too.”

His face is delicate and open, the glass walls shattered, shards of it littered around his lips, their reflection creating rainbows on him.

_You are._

He is the one hiding now.

Still there are two things hiding.

Love and him.

The realisation hurts. A punch to his jaw, a kick to his groin, a little blood in his urine. It is far from over. 

_Tender blues._

| | |

“There are a lot of things I can’t say.”

Louis keeps his eyes cast down, deep brown lashes casting shadows on his face. Spiderwebs.

“I try to though.”

There is a mole under his right eye. He wants to brush under it over and over again. He wants to feel the thin, purple bruised skin.

“But sometimes I can’t spit it out. It is like I feel in another language.”

His pinky is always further away from the rest of his fingers. It endears him far more than it should.

“And it just stays there, halfway down my throat, trying to claw its way out. I keep trying to swallow it but it has already sunken its claws deep.”

His face flashes with something that is _not_ pity. Perhaps understanding.

“It doesn’t hurt when I’m with you. It goes down easily.”

He blooms a lovely pink. A lotus blooming in mud under the waning moon.

 _Birth of Venus._

“You were right about me.”

His lips part, he wants to ask, he wants to coax the words out of him.

“You are right about a lot of things.” 

His face prickles a ripe red. It might be shame. It might be desire. It might be pride.

“I want to tell you all about it.”

_He can’t name it._

“But I’m feeling a lot and all of it is in a different language. My tongue isn’t mine.”

His thumb brushes his brow bone.

“You do heal me, even if I didn’t know I needed to be healed.”

He crumples down in his arms, inhaling his scent. 

The spicy aroma of his gel, tangy musk of boy, and maybe the sweet, sweet fragrance of _love_.

_Unspoken scars._

| | | 

They sign a lease for a one bedroom flat in the countryside.

They make it _theirs_ out of bits of memories ranging from their childhood houses to their latest flat, memories always deeply stained, tinged with nostalgia that steals away their breaths.

There are no bruises on the walls, they are smooth and painted a soft cream. The foundation doesn’t shake and quiver.

Harry curls his fingers around his ankle to calm him down, in turn he keeps Harry still. He helps him burn off the energy, tells him about elephants cycling and polar bears skateboarding.

_I will keep you still, you will calm me down._

They build a home in their house. They build it out of the ugly parts, the thickened skin growing back on scars, wisps of smoke adorning the corners, swirls of colours, the orange energy, the stardust they breathe and exchange.

His love is free and so is he.

He finds love everywhere. In their sock drawer, corner of their mouths, the jut out bone of knobbly knees, the click of ankles, pierced ears and kohl lined eyes.

He finishes the soup Harry makes in the evenings with a cocoa coloured spoon and a lemon yellow bowl, green leafs and cherry tomatoes painted on it.

_I will keep you safe, you will keep me warm._

They sometimes sit in the back, the balcony small but cosy, vines crawling on the walls. He drinks coffee, Harry keeps trying to add as much sugar as he can without him noticing.

_He notices but pretends to not see until the third sugar cube._

Harry sings an awful lot in the shower. He takes up all the hot water and his hair clogs the drain. Louis leaves the tap on as he shaves and doesn’t hang his towels to dry. They both mix up each other’s shampoos and constantly smell like each other. 

They argue about too many things. From the colour of their shoe rack to the cost of the grocery shopping.

But they always tumble into bed, all soft hands and kind eyes, love pouring out of every crevice, souls slowly but surely healing in the presence of each other.

“We will heal.”

“And together we will raise a family that will never have to heal,” Harry whispers to him, mouth wet, his hand curling around his jaw, kissing his neck, bodies complete like a pair of quotation marks.

_Mended hearts._

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked it, then you can reblog it [here](https://harryanthus.tumblr.com/post/631966564216913920/who-do-you-burn-for)


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